Cemetery: Parks not exploited

Prices on rise for locations near her resting place in Detroit.

Prices on rise for locations near her resting place in Detroit.

March 05, 2006|JOE SWICKARD Detroit Free Press

DETROIT -- Rosa Parks lies within the granite Gothic walls of her own chapel at Woodlawn Cemetery, her polished stone crypt bathed in soft light, a scene of restrained dignity befitting the mother of the civil rights movement. For a price, you and your loved ones can be entombed near her. But proximity comes at a premium. At the Rosa L. Parks Freedom Chapel just inside the gates of the cemetery, prices for the chapel crypts have jumped by no less than 42 percent -- and by more than 100 percent in some cases -- since the old stone mausoleum was renamed for Parks after her death in October in Detroit. And it doesn't sit well with some of the people closest to Parks, who worry that her legacy as the woman who touched off the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in 1955 might be cheapened. "Her burial was supposed to be private matter, not a spectacle," said Parks' closest living relative, nephew William McCauley. According to a cemetery price list, individual crypts in the chapel now cost $24,275, compared with $17,000 before spots in the building formerly known as the Celebration of Life were given, for free, to Parks, her husband and her mother after Parks' death. That price does not include inscriptions or the mandatory $500 casket wrap. For seven prime spaces closest to Parks' crypt, an even greater price hike is being considered. Before her death, a crypt could be bought for as little as $30,000. Now, cemetery officials say, negotiations are under way for a package sale of those seven spaces with the per-crypt price in the $60,000 to $65,000 range. The cemetery declined to identify the potential buyers. Woodlawn officials said they are not exploiting Parks. "No, no, I don't think we're profiteering at all," said Wade Reynolds, chief operating officer of Mikocem, the management company overseeing Woodlawn and more than 25 other Michigan cemeteries. He said there have been many improvements and upgrades to make the chapel one of Detroit's premier burial sites. The new prices, while higher than those at other Detroit-area cemeteries, will fund the improvements, cover future maintenance and turn a reasonable profit, he said. Tracy Fowlkes, Mikocem's area sales manager, said the new prices are in line with the chapel's desirable location as well as upgrades to the 1895 structure. "There is new underground electrical work, a new security alarm system and other interior upgrades," she said. Parks' final resting place puts her in an unusual position for civil rights pioneers. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is buried at the center named after him in Atlanta; a spot near him cannot be purchased. Harriet Tubman, who helped slaves escape bondage in the South via the Underground Railroad, lies in an older section of Ft. Hill Cemetery in Auburn, N.Y., where officials say there are no grave plots available. People have asked for spaces near Malcolm X at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County, N.Y., but none are available. That cemetery has many famous people buried in it -- including Judy Garland, Jim Henson, Ed Sullivan, Christopher Reeves, Paul Robeson, Jam Master Jay and Joan Crawford -- but sales representative Joe Bivona said it cannot charge a premium for proximity to the famous: The state won't allow it. New York is the only state in the nation with a board regulating prices. In Hollywood, a line of probity is drawn by Forest Lawn Memorial Parks & Mortuary where many of the stars are buried. The cemetery does not list celebrities who are buried there, nor does it provide maps to their graves, said John Warren, senior vice president of marketing. The prices, he said, are determined by the setting and amenities of section, not the people buried there. At Woodlawn, none of the available crypts have yet been sold at the new prices. "I know some people might want to be buried near her, but we're just private people and so was she," said McCauley, a co-representative of her estate. "When will people stop taking advantage of her legacy?"